West Virginia University Department of History Associate Professor Mark Tauger has been awarded a membership in the Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton University for the 2016-17 academic year.
“It is a recognition of the high level and quality of scholarship that history faculty at WVU are producing. It is what we in history and in the humanities all aspire to achieve,” said Joseph Hodge, department of history chair. “It is the second fellowship to the Institute of Advanced Studies at Princeton that history faculty have won in the past three years, along with several other nationally prestigious awards and fellowships including the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS), the Newberry Library in Chicago, and the Rome Prize from the American Academy in Rome."
The membership will allow Tauger to pursue his research book project on the environmental and agricultural history of Russian and Soviet famines and the efforts of agricultural scientists to respond to them, culminating in a Soviet green revolution, in which Soviet plant breeders anticipated the work of the American Nobel Laureate Norman Borlaug.
"This fellowship is a good opportunity for me to pull together a lot of work that I have done over the past several years into a comprehensive study," said Tauger.
Membership in the Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton is highly selective and prestigious. Each year the IAS selects approximately 190 members from an average of more than 1,500 applicants. The major consideration in being selected is the expectation that each member's period of residence at the Institute will result in work of significance and originality.
